Skip to main content
All Posts By

michael

Dec 21

The Future of Work: Women in Procurement

By Procurement No Comments

The past 22-months have dramatically altered both how and where we work. And women have been disproportionately affected.

How will this change as we begin to emerge from the pandemic? How can we build a networked economy and create new opportunities for women?

Join Dawn Tiura, President & CEO of the Sourcing Industry Group, in conversation with Marisol Buczynski Buchanan, President & CEO of Premikati, and Elizabeth Lizotte-Brown, Sr Director for Channel Partnerships, The Mom Project, for a discussion on these topics and their perspectives.

Dec 22

3 Business Resolutions You Can Actually Keep In 2021

By Procurement No Comments

The New Year of 2021 is right around the corner, and many are breathing a sigh of relief that 2020 is finally coming to a close. After a daunting, strenuous, and uncertain year for nearly everyone on the globe, the tradition of setting New Year’s resolutions can be a welcome change of pace that requires focus on the positive and a future that holds brighter possibilities that are, at least somewhat, within our control.

But if you’re like many people, your business resolutions may suffer from an eyes-bigger-than-your mouth scenario. Despite a color-coded bullet journal, habit tracker, ergonomic chair, and the best of intentions, businesses usually run out of steam within the first few weeks. And this year, there’s all the stipulations and precautions to navigate in the midst of a pandemic to also consider—things like attend 10x business networking events, etc.

We’ve put together a list of three, Covid-friendly New Year’s resolutions for business that you can actually keep amid the chaos.

Prioritize worker health and safety above anything else

Now more than ever, it’s important to make sure your employees are taken care of. Follow all recommendations such as safe social distancing, proper mask usage that is enforced, and regular hand washing.

Additionally, you can set aside time for employees to simply chat on a call wih their coworkers. For many adults, the people we work with are our main source of non-family socialization with people in our age group. If working from home is starting to make employees feel isolated and irritable, schedule time on the clock for workers to regain some camaraderie.

This is a good tactic for reputation management as well. Businesses who chose money over worker safety in early 2020 have received a lot of backlash for their actions. Many people have begun to actively refuse to purchase from brands that don’t respect their workers.

Clean up your remote work processes

If you just started with online work because of the pandemic, then you’ve likely gone through some growing pains this year. In 2021, vow to clean up your remote work processes by:

  • Managing tool subscriptions. Delete unneeded accounts to save immediate cash.
  • Creating standard operating procedures for common tasks such as blog posts
  • Choosing a unified system for all employees such as Google Drive or Slack and then communicating

Learn how to set effective KPIs

Just like personal goals, many businesses struggle with KPIs. They sound great on paper, but don’t perform their intended function in an overarching sense.

Take some time out in 2021 in order to reclaim time for years to come by doing a deep dive into goal planning and key performance indicators. Explore how to set realistic goals and KPIs that will actually gauge your success at meeting them.

Learning to set effective KPIs now can save you years of tried and failed attempts, wasted money, and trial-and-error loops that make only tiny incremental progress. Choosing the right ones and working toward them with consistency can be a gamechanger in your business if you’re used to doing everything by feeling, instinct, and happenstance. Having some measurable stats can also boost your team’s morale and keep them on track with insight into how what they do fits into the big picture of what’s most important to your company.

What are your New Year’s resolutions? At Premikati, we’re working harder than ever to make sure our clients have a wide range of features, a supplier list not to be reckoned with, and a simple interface for all of their purchasing needs. We also offer business process outsourcing in order to optimize the use of your time so you can use your time to its fullest.

Dec 22

What 2021 Has In Store For Supply Chain And Procurement

By Blog No Comments

As December 31, 2020 fast approaches, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that we might as well start calling the “new normal” plain-old no-modifier “normal,” because what we used to call normal is over. While that reality sets in, we turn towards 2021 with hope of redemption, some way to calm the effects of the first year of this decade. 

We’ve seen a record-breaking number of named storms this season at a whopping 30, six of which were major hurricanes. We’ve seen the rise of the coronavirus pandemic, the overburdened hospitals and overtaxed supply chains which led to no respirators and no toilet paper and a lot of desperate people. We’ve seen riots abound. And politics? Let’s not even start down that path. 

But we’ve also seen the advent of not one, but multiple vaccinations show results in fighting Covid-19, the product of researchers around the globe sharing for the greater good. We’ve seen suppliers and manufacturers rise to the occasion to protect humanity at its most vulnerable. More than any other year in recent decades, we’ve seen the innovation and sheer force of will that keep people going, growing, changing, and making progress no matter the obstacles in the way. You can see it with online schooling, work from home, distilleries turned sanitizer manufacturers, and widespread curbside pickup. As easy as it is to lose track of, as a species, we are teaming up to fight the pandemic and to support one another, as best we can from a safe social distance (six feet apart, we’re told.) 

So what do all these changes mean for supply chain and manufacturing? This segment of the economy has not escaped unscathed, and 2021 is likely to bring even more profound changes as complex ideas come to fruition in the face of a chaotic world. Here’s what you can expect: 

All eyes on supply chain, our unsuspecting heroes

Supply chain professionals tend to fly under the radar, invisibly managing the gears that keep humanity buzzing along. But when people can’t get the equipment they need to survive or maintain their basic quality of life (things like toilet paper, Lysol, hand soap, N-95 masks, and respirators, to name a few) then those who have never given a second thought to where and from whom all these sorts of items come, they start to scrutinize the why’s. 

During Covid, this has meant monitoring suppliers for ethical dilemmas such as price gouging or dangerous working conditions. Throughout 2021, expect consumers and businesses alike to offer deep scrutiny to supply chain practices as old world ways break down entirely in our now-digital economy (with our overburdened postal service.)  

Suppliers who come up with innovative solutions and respect the health of their employees will see increased loyalty and applause while people are paying more attention than ever. As is natural, bad apples will float to the top—perhaps only faster now in the mid-pandemic world. 

Expect more recognition, too, as consumers begin to see and value the role of various players in their supply chains.

A much colder supply chain

As vaccines are introduced to patients around the globe, somebody has to transport these ultra-sensitive products. Current Covid vaccines require a maintained temperature of  -70 degrees Celsius ©, or -94 Fahrenheit. With so many people at risk, and each patient requiring two doses for the vaccine to be effective, we can expect a rise in focus on transportation refrigeration technology that can sustain such low temperatures. In the same vein, a need for transparency and verifiable track records that show chain of custody, temperature consistency, etc. (probably via some IoT device paired with blockchain tech) will drive innovations among supply chain startups.

Susan Beardslee, Freight Transportation, and Logistics Principal Analyst at ABI Research has described the efforts needed to effectively supply the Covid-19 vaccines as “Herculean” and requiring “efforts beyond the actual vaccine development and approval.”

Continued volatility and increased automation

No one in supply chain, logistics, or manufacturing has been spared of the uncertainty and volatility caused by the coronavirus. Driver shortages and overburdened warehouses paired with a teetering economy make for delicate and unprecedented balance to be struck in order to stay afloat and stay relevant. Many in the supply chain realm are turning to machine learning in order to help predict what might come next and how to proceed. Some manufacturers consider lights-out factories that are fully automated—essentially, someone pops in to turn the lights out, and the robots handle the rest. 

Businesses will need to remain flexible in order to adapt to what 2021 has to offer without breaking under the weight of the chaos. 

The disappearance of smaller companies

Of course, not everyone will succeed, even if they stay flexible and do everything “right.” Covid-19 has already brought businesses to their knees across a wide range of industries. An unfortunate truth is that smaller companies often can’t face the pressure or constantly changing variables that come with a crisis-minded market.

At least in the US, government funding for small business can sometimes be finicky to navigate, and there’s no guarantee of continued support for small businesses. 

Nearshoring and Regionalization

Expect supply chain companies to look to nearshoring and regionalization to help manage logistics and cost. Companies will more frequently turn to neighboring countries for products that may have once been bought overseas. This allows for redundancy, cost savings, and strengthening and revitalization of local economies for an easier recovery from 2020’s effects. 

Some aspects of 2021 are just going to be a matter of wait and see, especially as rapidly as the world is changing in response to the pandemic. No matter the specs you need from a supplier, 

Premikati Marketplace has you covered. If you’re looking for professional services to help give you a competitive edge in today’s strange market, Premikati can help by managing your business processes using our team of experts. Reach out to us today to see how we can help your business flourish in 2021. 

Dec 07
premikati marketplace

2 Things Your Business Needs To Do ASAP

By Procurement No Comments

Do you need to take a serious assessment of your business right now?

For months, we’ve seen how COVID-19 has affected our personal lives, businesses, and the way our society functions in general. And if you haven’t taken the time to really dive into how your business is functioning from the ground up, I challenge you to make this your top priority.

The impact that COVID-19 has had on business is emphasizing what has always been true: The future is filled with unforeseen circumstances, and the world is changing fast. Businesses need to be smart, agile, and innovative, but it’s hard to do this if you don’t have a solid foundation in place.

Many businesses are experiencing budget cuts and a reduced workforce. Now is the time to become more strategic with your game plan and fix or improve current processes.

Plain and simple, if you haven’t already, you need to:

1. Cut costs.
2. Make sure time is used efficiently as possible.

Of course, while this may be simple, it is frequently not easy. Here are ways you can approach making these essential assessments:

You Need to Dial In Your Spending.
We want our businesses to not just survive—we want them to thrive. However, especially in the last several months, many companies have shifted into survival mode.

Companies in many industries are having to take a hard look at their expenses, and there have been significant cuts across the board. It’s essential to stay lean and mean, and you need to be bold, proactive, and smart when evaluating where you can cut back.

Part of successfully cutting costs begins with asking the right questions. I encourage businesses to consider:

  • What do you actually NEED for your business to operate right now? Are you actually accumulating things you don’t need? How have your needs changed with more employees working from home?
  • How are purchases approved? Who is in charge of approving purchases? Are they able to review and approve in a timely manner? Are inefficient processes causing your business to miss out on important opportunities that could have been? Who is spending money on what, and how can you find out this information?
  • Are you actually buying from the BEST supplier for your specific needs? Are you getting the very best deals on items you truly need? Are the products you’re using high quality? Does your supplier provide a top-notch shopping experience so you don’t waste time? Does your supplier provide excellent customer service?

Not only do you need to simplify your procurement process, but you need to make sure you’re also getting the most out of it.

Is Valuable Time Being Wasted?

While working from home can have its perks, there is an added layer of complexity due to the unique challenges of COVID-19. People are not simply “working from home”; they are doing everything from home. And with budget cuts, employees may be working harder and longer hours than ever.

Your goal here is to let your employees spend time on the things that really sustain and grow your business. Again, identifying how to fix and improve processes begins with asking the right questions:

  • Are your employees wasting valuable hours on easy-to-solve procurement issues? For example, how many hours do they spend manually reconciling purchase orders with invoices? (How many hours or days does this add up to each year?)
  • How long do employees spend researching the suppliers with the lowest costs? After investing in hours researching suppliers, have you ended up actually saving money? Are the suppliers reputable? Do they offer white glove customer support where you can talk to a real person right away?
  • How much time does it take to get set up with each new supplier? Is it worth the investment? How long until you’ll need to find a new supplier to grow with your business? How long will it take you to figure out if it’s the best fit for your needs?

Don’t waste time doing things that have simple, elegant solutions already available.

***

No matter what your unique challenges may be during this time, every business can benefit from taking a hard look at how time and money are being used.

If you read this and felt slightly panicked or overwhelmed, you’re not alone. This stuff is hard. It can be time-consuming to figure out, and sometimes it can feel easier to let things get done the way they always have, instead of making the investment in a potential solution that may or may not work out. You need to figure out a way to make big changes… without wasting even more money and time.

Premikati Marketplace has you covered. How can you know for sure? We know from experience exactly what businesses (like yours!) struggle with the most.

Premikati Marketplace helps your business:

  • Cut costs. Companies that use Premikati Marketplace save up to 35% due to pre-negotiated pricing on millions of items, efficiencies, and spend visibility.
  • Use time efficiently. Set up Premikati Marketplace in less than 24 hours. You don’t need any IT or technical admin support, either.

Click here to learn more about the Premikati Marketplace

Oct 02
procurement spokes of the wheel

The Spokes in the Wheel of Procurement

By Procurement No Comments

So many things have changed in 2020, what a year! But, what matters most is ensuring the spokes of your procurement wheels are all there. It really comes down to the most important fundamentals within the entire procurement space.

Typically, procurement involves designing and deploying strategies that will drive value from the supplier base. To start this process requires in-depth research on current and emerging trends to help determine new solutions and which suppliers are the best fit. Then, it is about managing relationships, conducting best practices in negotiation, and driving a cost-effective plan. Tools to ensure best-in-class procurement can vary from business to another, but here are the essential practices.

Use cloud-based procurement tools

There isn’t a better time than the present to implement future-ready procurement activities. Make sure team members have more time to spend on strategic initiatives, as well as reducing repetitive manual tasks are all vital for continuity especially in the face of unprecedented circumstances.

Invariably, technology plays a massive component of everyday activities. As such, a procurement digital transformation becomes inevitable. Moreover, competitive organizations are the ones taking the lead around implementing digital procurement processes.

Initiate supplier evaluation

Unquestionably this is a crucial step. It takes analytical insights and data to evaluate a potential supplier comprehensively before sending out the contract. In addition, you must execute due diligence around quality, delivery, pricing, and supply chain transparency. Some say this is one of the most important spokes of your procurement wheel.

Many businesses consider procurement as one of their top priorities since it can take up a significant portion of their overall spend. While many companies still have manual procurement practices in place, it’s critical to transition to and embrace relevant technology solutions to keep up with evolving business and consumer demands.

Interview prospective vendors

It is imperative to interview vendors to learn more about their services and products. Every business has a set of suppliers who deliver essential products and services. Yet, qualifying and managing suppliers can become quite complex. It begins with identification of a prospective supplier, then onboarding, scheduling, invoicing, and payments. When executed manually, these processes can take hours each. Other ways to improve supplier engagement include:

  • Viewing suppliers as strategic partners
  • Setting parameters around specific KPIs
  • Creating a mutually-beneficial partnership based on trust
  • Facilitating easy communication and collaboration

Optimize inventory

Depending on the economy, and shifts in the market, profit margins can shrink. As such, it is crucial to constantly be on the lookout for ways to improve profits and control spend. So then, procurement should be involved in optimizing inventory as the cost of “holding” inventory is much greater than ordering products. Generally, holding costs should be no more than 30 percent – this includes consumable items, electronics, clothing, and more.

So what causes an unbalanced inventory? Usually, it is the result of ineffective forecasting and planning. To improve inventory management requires data-driven analytics and insights. Ask these questions to help optimize your inventory:

  • Have any products or services been over-or-under purchased?
  • What is the ratio of operating inventory relative to excess stock?
  • What is the desired rate of purchases?
  • Do purchase orders align with current inventory levels?

Incorporate spend transparency

Transparency opens opportunities for finding savings and enhancing operational efficiencies. Not to mention, spend transparency enables accountability while mitigating the potential for fraud. What steps can you take to incorporate spend transparency? Below are a few of the fundamentals:

  • Spend time defining and deploying procurement policies
  • Document every step of your procurement wheel and monitor progress
  • Make sure your contracts are fool-proof
  • Execute audits frequently

The objective is to decimate maverick and dark spending. With procurement technology, you can use the power of automation and analytics to do just that.

Improve contract management

How would you rate your bargaining abilities? Negotiation skills are paramount in terms of procurement. You don’t want to bend on either quantity or quality. When you embark upon a well-negotiated partnership, you improve your competitive edge while inducing cost savings where needed. One of the most common issues in procurement is contract management.

Why do contracts matter? For many reasons including consistency, supply chain continuity, and budgeting. And, it’s also critical to have a central repository where you can quickly review, manage, and audit your contracts at any time – accessible from anywhere.

Collaborate with suppliers

Now that you have initiated the contract, it’s time to ensure a steady workflow to ensure product shipment or service delivery remains smooth. This is also the time to have backup plans in place in the event of an unforeseen scenario. Supplier management is all about people management.

Manage in-house expectations

Remember that you will still need to win over the confidence of your team members regarding both quantity and quality expectations. As a result, it is important to be prepared for any potential issues, to be transparent with your responses, and to be open to team suggestions.

Review periodically

You might have signed the contract, but it’s not over yet. Now, you must be vigilant to keep suppliers on task with fulfilling their agreements. Still, you must be diplomatic at all times. Keep an eye on the contracts, market conditions, and evolving business requirements.

Final thought

You are now aware of the spokes of your procurement wheel. Some of these processes might seem familiar while others could be new. Nonetheless, procurement excellence mandates proper implementation. The first step in creating a competitive and sustainable procurement process is with the right technology tools. Only then can you make data-driven decisions, maintain compliance, reduce expenses, optimize inventory, and more. Contact Premikati today if you’re ready to take the spokes of your procurement wheel to the next level.

Sep 04
Premikati Contract Management

Contract Management for CFOs

By Procurement Managed Services No Comments

7 Ways Financial Departments Benefit From A Modern Contract Management System

 

Finance and procurement go together like peanut butter and jelly. Procurement teams must have both time and funds to complete their tasks while financial departments must control spend and guide money towards the highest-impact activities available. Contract management software like SAP Ariba help finance and procurement work together smoothly while saving everyone a ton of time and money. Here are seven ways a good contract management system can benefit your financial department: 

Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TOC)

If there’s one thing that excites a finance pro as much as increasing a company’s revenue, it’s saving a boatload of money. Using a contract management system is a high-impact path to lower TOC vs. a traditional pen, paper, and fax machine system. Between reduced liability costs, on-time contract renewals, salaries that go further thanks to a major speedboost, and data-based insights into suppliers, a proper contract management system can go a long way to reduce costs. As compared to the analog method and other digital contract management systems on the market, SAP Ariba offers more bang for the buck at a lower price point for any small to medium enterprise looking for a robust contract management system. 

Mitigate The Risk Of Costly Liability Issues

Many risks are preventable with the right tools. Contract management systems help mitigate risks, effectively saving money, in a variety of ways. First, they reduce contract errors such as unsigned fields or accepting a modified, nonstandard contract without review. Because compliance and performance information is stored within the CMS, it’s also easier to see which suppliers may pose problems for the business in the future by offering shoddy quality products or failing to maintain compliance with governmental agencies. 

Stopping these problems from the onset can save massive amounts of money in legal fees as well as reductions due to loss of reputation. 

Broadstroke Benefits With E-signatures

E-signatures let suppliers sign their contracts online. This process can save a lot of money compared to mailing back and forth paper materials which can be bulky and expensive, especially in the face of rising mail costs. The e-signature, however, is traceable and secure. Platforms that offer this service such as DocuSign—the software of choice for SAP Ariba contracts—come with other perks too. They walk signers through each step of the signing process, highlighting the field to sign or initial to make sure no spaces are left blank. This reduces fees that could be associated with any legal recourse that arises from an unsigned or improperly-signed contract. 

Save Time And Reduce Salary Costs

Perhaps more beneficial, e-signature software reminds signers to complete the task which not only ensures compliance, it saves a ton of money in time procurement doesn’t have to spend to reach out and pester people for signature. The cost associated with procurement and legal professionals can quickly balloon if employees get bogged down in sluggish outdated processes. By providing contract templates and a clause library as well as esignature functionality and dashboards with the most important information, each employee can focus more on high-impact tasks instead of menial, wrote jobs. 

Never Miss A Key Date

Especially when underperformance has been an issue, missing a key date to cancel or renew a contract with a supplier can be devastating financially. While it can be incredibly tedious to try to manage all major contract renewal dates using analog methods, a good contract management system can keep everyone on track for success. SAP Ariba offers users a dashboard with upcoming important dates such as contract renewals so there is ample time for research and negotiation that could save a lot of money.

Gain Full Visibility Of The Entire Contract Lifecycle

Optimization is hard when you can’t see everything at play. Contract management software offers financial departments full visibility into the contract management lifecycle making it easier to analyze, strategize, and optimize for the best possible cash flow scenario. With SAP Ariba, the entire set of actions from initiation to renewal are kept in a central database with a variety of other supplier information within a fully-auditable trail. 

Analyze Your Best-Value Suppliers 

With more information about each individual supplier, finance professionals gain insight into  how each supplier plays a role in the organization. Which suppliers bring the most value to the table based on a variety of factors? Where is there room for negotiation? Which suppliers should be replaced as soon as possible. By understanding where value lies within your contracts and suppliers, it’s easier to make wise choices without all the guesswork of papers and pens. 

About Premikati

Premikati is a woman-owned business of procurement experts providing best-in-class software to maximize your company’s ROI.  

Our award-winning team has a 100% success rate implementing on-time and on-budget, due to our agility, leanness, operational experience, and the ability to tailor the transformation process from C-level to end user. (For more information, visit www.premikati.com)

Jul 12
Group Purchasing Organization Premikati Marketplace

Leverage Group Purchasing Organizations for Your Business

By Procurement No Comments

When you talk about Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) for improving cost savings, the most strategic way this is done is through indirect spend. For example, an organization’s expenditures that are necessary for ongoing business operations but does not directly impact a company’s final output of products or services.

Items categorized under indirect spend might be hardware, furniture, contracted labor, office supplies, and cleaning services. Companies can become members of a GPO to enjoy significant discounts relative to buying items individually and paying for the retail markup. Other ways a GPO can save money include the following:

Specialized Programs: In-office technologies such as smart devices, hardware, and software.

Negotiation: Let the GPO handle supplier relationship management while the company enjoys the advantages of pre-negotiated pricing such as can be found through vetted Ariba suppliers within the Premikati Marketplace.

Accessibility: SMBs may find it more difficult to get the best pricing from the top suppliers. A GPO can help small and mid-sized companies receive the same aggressive pricing usually reserved for enterprise businesses.

What is a GPO?

Usually, a GPO will offer a platform for businesses in similar sectors to join. A GPO is designed to negotiate competitive supplier pricing for its members. As the GPO grows in size, so do the discounts. As a result, A GPO can give many small and mid-sized businesses access to cost savings they may not have reached on their own.

How do GPOs operate?

The driving component of a GPO is its membership. To illustrate, a large number of members gives the GPO the leverage to purchase in volume. And, by purchasing in bulk, every member receives a much better deal on the supplies they would normally purchase. So then, businesses can garner the benefits of bulk pricing without having to purchase in bulk.

How GPOs save companies money

Every business has purchasing needs. Yet, those purchases will add up quickly due to retail markup and inability to negotiate better prices are items bought in small volumes. On the other hand, GPOs can negotiate on behalf of their members to get better pricing.

The contracts can be broken down into two facets: A discount and a rebate. GPO specialists will reach out to and negotiate with manufacturers to set the pricing and rebate levels. In terms of rebates, a GPO contract may offer a rebate per case of products paid to an operator. GPOs also conduct savings analysis of several months’ worth of invoices to see where they can implement further cost cuts. In essence, the GPO is your partner and one who is well connected. A GPO may also offer procurement consulting and supply chain management.

Other forms of savings

There is also more to a GPO than the straightforward cost savings. GPOs also save businesses time because they no longer have to go through the exhaustive search of finding the right suppliers then trying to negotiate a price that fits within their budgets. A GPO takes all the work out of negotiations.

Would a GPO membership make sense for your business?

There isn’t any question that a GPO membership will help to keep costs down while saving businesses time around supplier searches and negotiations. The power of group purchasing makes pricing much more competitive. Not to mention, these savings can help to keep businesses operational when dealing with unprecedented circumstances such as a pandemic.

Premikati encourages businesses to take a diversified approach and to work with a GPO that aligns with your business values and objectives. As a result, you can bring more procurement benefits to your organization that will go beyond monetary savings.

Jul 12
CFO Spend Visibility in Procurement

3 Ways for CFOs to Increase Spend Visibility

By Procurement No Comments

Summary: Premikati Marketplace bolsters the efforts of CFOs by offering an easy-to-use consumer-style B2B purchasing platform with deep, enterprise-grade spend controls and analysis tools. Premikati offers trusted suppliers with steep discounts on repeat purchases, supplier importing, rebates, automatic approval workflows, pricing thresholds, and money – and time-saving process cost reductions.

If you’re a CFO, you care about your company’s bottom line. If the health, wealth, and profitability of your business is being hindered by less-than-ideal procurement practices, then a marketplace, like Premikati, that offers deep spend visibility and approval controls while also reducing hours needed to manage purchasing tasks may be right for you.  Read on to find out how Premikati Marketplace can increase spend visibility and cut costs in your business.

Know Your Sources

Suppliers are the lifeblood of any business, so it’s important to know that you’re using the right ones. What that means will be different for every business. Sustainability, cost, quality,  relationships, and contract terms all play a role in maintaining a healthy, visible spend and supply chain.

Because Premikati is underpinned by SAP—a leader in sustainability—CFOs can help ensure a healthy supply chain in terms of social and environmental impact as well efficiency via streamlined processes. What does this mean for your bottom line?

“…the majority of Generation Z (54 percent) state that they are willing to spend an incremental 10 percent or more on sustainable products, with 50 percent of Millennials saying the same.” –Greg Petro on Forbes

Plus, Premikati offers new sources of savings across the board through a high-quality, trusted list of suppliers. Many companies see up to 35%  savings on frequently-bought products.

Do you already have a supplier your company trusts? Premikati supports custom catalogs with suppliers you already know with very little overhead to get started.

With Premikati, you not only gain access to a list of reliable suppliers, but also an interface that allows your procurement team to quickly compare prices and aggregate suppliers in one simple, easy-to-use platform.

Reduce Time And Costs

Clunky, outdated buying processes can become time-consuming and burdensome. Every hour wasted on reinventing the proverbial procurement wheel is a billable hour from an employee or contractor, hours that can quickly cut into profitability. Premikati helps you streamline the entire buying process and simplify vendor management, saving you time and money.

Gone are the days of needing a password for every single supplier. Premikati lets users access the entire marketplace from a single user account. That and process automations such as automatic spend approvals can reduce the ad-hoc buying process down to hours instead of days or weeks. Controlled spending also limits costs in predetermined ways that keep spending from spiraling out of control.

Plus, Premikati lets your team quickly and easily see which suppliers they are utilizing for which products and at what price point—this helps reduce buying things you don’t need because procurement wasn’t able to locate a pre-existing contract with a supplier. Easily search product categories and types to see where your money is going or view an automated report at a schedule set by you.

Beyond the 35% savings seen by most companies on products they use often, most also receive a typical rebate of 1% on all Premikati purchases made with your P-card—a system which, itself, reduces unexpected costs.

Control Your Spend

Spend controls with Premikati are as simple as ever. The P-Card lets you set exactly how much can be spent ahead of time. Automated approval workflows and reporting, user access controls, the ability to control specific commodities as well as create price thresholds make spend control and analysis easier than ever before.

Premikati balances the ease of a consumer-grade platform such as Amazon with deep, enterprise-grade control, analysis, and automation tools. This makes for a fast, reliable, and truly visible purchasing experience that increases profitability by cutting costs and heavily reducing time expenditures over analog processes and disparate toolsets.

About Premikati

Get what you really want from your purchasing software. The Premikati Marketplace offers procurement that is as intuitive as online shopping with the robust data of Fortune 100 companies and extensive customization options, all with no IT required and no commitment.

You can order what you want—where, when, and how you want it. Diversity filtering? Sure thing. Support local? Absolutely. We even support custom catalogs and customer-specific vendors.

Merge that with full spend control and visibility, real-time reporting and analytics, custom approval flows and automation, and you’ll find a best-in-class software that’s tailor-made for small- and medium-sized enterprise businesses.

Premikati scales seamlessly with your business with no impact to end-users and no additional training required. We have prices to fit every budget, and we can have you up and running in hours.

All of this with white-glove customer service included at no charge, so you can always trust you can talk to a real person when you need them.

Don’t settle for anything less. Contact us today!

Jul 12
Premikati Marketplace best Procurement Software for SMBs

Don’t Let These 8 Things Happen To Your Procurement Team

By Procurement No Comments

Is your purchasing software pulling its weight? Poorly executed purchasing platforms not only cost you time and money, they put your company at legal and reputational risk. If any of the following sound like you, it might be time to kick your lazy procurement software to the curb and trade up for a real man—uh, business marketplace. We meant business marketplace. 

Spending 19 hours reconciling invoices

PO recon—while it sounds like some cool Navy SEAL mission, the reality is far less glamorous. In 2020, there is literally no reason to manually reconcile purchase orders with invoices or your accounts. Process automation here saves time and prevents costly mistakes, so you can focus on what really matters in your business instead of putting out fires or wasting time using outdated methods. Automated reconciliation ensures that everything matches up all of the time, without you ever needing to think about it. 

Buying from the wrong supplier

Your purchase order is a legally binding contract—so what happens when you buy from the wrong supplier? Not only might you have to adjust the purchase to show the correct supplier (which is going to be a real doozy if you’re manually reconciling invoices and it’s already been reconciled) to keep a proper audit trail, you may also face legal repercussions. 

Alternatively, you may be buying from a supplier that’s wrong for you. Perhaps you could reduce costs by using a supplier for multiple types of purchases in order to facilitate a loyal working relationship. Or, maybe you just picked the supplier that costs way more than the rest. The Premikati Marketplace can help you cut costs by offering new sources of savings via a list of high quality, trusted suppliers—many of which offer up to 35% discounts on frequently purchased products. The right supplier is waiting for you at Premikati Marketplace. Already have a couple of the right suppliers? We can add your own suppliers too!

… Or a supplier you don’t even have a contract with

Maybe your contract has expired. Maybe it was never a valid contract at all because its still sitting in a pile on someone’s desk, waiting to be signed and faxed and filed. Do you know which contracts are active and valid? 

Don’t subject yourself to the legal risks that come with doing business without valid contracts. 

“On average, 94% of tail spend comes from uncontracted suppliers.” —Premikati Marketplace

With Premikati Marketplace, you can automate old, analog systems and see which suppliers you’re working with—with the click of a button—in order to gain both efficiency and visibility.

Buying a mountain of stuff you don’t need

Would your warehouse and office closet make Marie Kondo giggle with maniacal glee? Space is a precious commodity especially as consumers and other businesses expect faster and more personalized experiences with every passing day. Every dollar spent on useless things that you don’t need is a dollar you can’t invest in moving forward with your business or keeping an edge on your competitors. 

With good B2B procurement software, you can easily see what you’ve already bought so you don’t double (or triple!) up on what you need.

Buying things that are probably illegal

You want a supply chain that is socially responsible and legal at every link. The Premikati Marketplace is underpinned by SAP, a world-renowned company that is a leader in sustainability.

Shipping your orders to your house

There’s nothing else to say about this. You know who you are. Prevent it with a good procurement platform like Premikati Marketplace. 

Tight budget with no approvals

Especially if you’re a startup or you’re maximizing growth or perhaps if you’re using a zero-based budget, money can be tight. Competition can be stiff. And sometimes, to make the move that will really help your revenue, differentiate you from a competitor, or skyrocket your growth, you have to make swift decisions. If your purchasing processes are bogged down by archaic methods and you’re waiting by the telegraph—err, email—for your PO approval, guess what? Your opportunity may have already passed. If you were making hand sanitizer in January 2020, you better bet you needed to scale and scale fast before the supplies were gone. 

With a good procurement platform, you can control your spend to the cent but also implement automated purchase approvals. Stop leaky spend and without slowing progress… that’s the dream, eh? 

Multiple logins

How many users and passwords do you really need to fulfill your procurement needs? Stop sacrificing security because Lilly is keeping her password taped to the bottom of her keyboard because she has too many to remember. Free up your tech support from endless verifications and password changes. Keep your purchasing processes safe and efficient by reducing the number of accounts you need for purchases.  With the Premikati Marketplace, each member of your procurement team will only need one login total, not one login for EACH supplier portal.  One and done – quite a nightmare saver for your tech support team.

About Premikati

Get what you really want from your purchasing software. The Premikati Marketplace offers procurement that is as intuitive as online shopping with the robust data of Fortune 100 companies and extensive customization options, all with no IT required and no commitment. 

You can order what you want—where, when, and how you want it. Diversity filtering? Sure thing. Support local? Absolutely. We even support custom catalogs and customer-specific vendors.

Merge that with full spend control and visibility, real-time reporting and analytics, custom approval flows and automation, and you’ll find a best-in-class software that’s tailor-made for small- and medium-sized enterprise businesses. 

Premikati scales seamlessly with your business with no impact to end-users and no additional training required. We have prices to fit every budget, and we can have you up and running in hours. 

All of this with white-glove customer service included at no charge, so you can always trust you can talk to a real person when you need them. 

Don’t settle for anything less. Contact us today!

 

Jun 26
socially conscious supply chain

How to Build a Socially Conscious Supply Chain

By Procurement No Comments

There was a time when the socially conscious supply chain was more of a side dish, or perhaps icing on the cake so to speak. For instance, after profits were made, it was a nice-to-have if a company performed some social good in the process. Well, these days, the icing on the cake is now the main dish when it comes to branding. In fact, consumers and employees alike expect organizations to be socially conscious. How much has this permeated the mainstream? According to EngageForGood.com:

  • 86% of customers want businesses to have a stand on social issues,
  • 77% feel a deeper emotional connection to socially conscious companies relative to businesses following a more traditional methodology,
  • 73% of respondents said they would be more likely to defend a company if it was socially conscious.

The statistics above aren’t the only research compiled on how beneficial it can be for a modern company to engage in socially conscious practices. The returns can come in the form of consumer trust, greater visibility, improved shareholder value, and an increase in employee retention.

The pressure, not just from employees and consumers, but also from investors and shareholders is to embrace socially conscious practices and become more responsible for the safety and wellbeing of every individual affected by any phase along the supply chain.

Thinking of a socially conscious supply chain means incorporating social, good governance, and environmental factors into decision-making and all processes. Further, this is about a long-term strategy for improving the economic, social, and environmental value along every phase of the chain. 

In 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council outlined the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and provided these three pillars:

  • The state duty to protect human rights
  • The corporate responsibility to respect human rights
  • Access to remedy for victims of business-related abuses

By deploying a socially conscious supply chain, companies secure their place to operate in a more socially conscious world. 

Now that you know the reasons, here are four ways you can build a socially conscious supply chain.

Adopt a long-term approach

Remember, a socially conscious supply chain isn’t just a trend. As a result, it is crucial to develop initiatives that are designed for today and in the future. It helps to start with an effective business case and to get buy-in from key stakeholders. 

Prioritize long-term growth over short-term gains. It should be a concept that is holistic in nature. Moreover, the focus should be on mitigating risks, branding improvement, and overall cost reduction. Then, implement tracking capabilities to ensure that your supply chain remains socially conscious.

Audit for social conscious protocols

Looking up and down your supply chain, it is vital to determine areas that could become more socially conscious. The objective is to infuse socially responsible practices throughout your supply chain. You can start by screening prospective new suppliers for their processes around

  • Sourcing
  • Social standards
  • Quality 
  • Environmental standards 

Have your supply chain audit your suppliers regularly along those standards. Next, evaluate your suppliers relative to globally-recognized standards around sustainability. Collect data that can be quantifiable and serve as evidence for any decisions you make. 

If there are socially conscious violations in your supply chain practices, you have the data to move forward with any resolutions you make. In addition, you can work closely with your partners to provide training around socially conscious practices not just for the executives but for their employees as well.  

Stay transparent

Consumers want companies to be both transparent and authentic. Naturally, it’s difficult to be authentic without transparency – which is fundamental towards building a socially conscious supply chain. When you can show transparency within your supply chain, you build trust and may even improve your reputation and competitive standing.

To illustrate, many grocers have had to change their purchasing processes over the past decade where they are buying more fresh produce as demand for processed foods continues to wane. Also, many consumers now want to know whether their food was ethically caught and organically grown. The same is true of the coffee industry where customers are moving towards fair trade sourcing practices such as executed by Equal Exchange or Allegro. In terms of the supply chain, the best option is end-to-end transparency.

With this type of transparency, impact assessments can be executed and any associated mitigation can be quickly deployed. Although this strategy may take more upfront investment, it is the preferred approach as opposed to running a supply chain that imposes human rights violations, environmental damage, and is exposed to fraudulent practices. So then, transparency also allows a company to remedy unfavorable scenarios more quickly and not buckle under the strain of bad branding and outdated practices.

Work with minority suppliers

A socially conscious supply chain includes partnerships with minority suppliers. In fact, minority-run businesses have been growing at two times the national average. This is a part of the economy that must be recognized. Additionally, a supplier diversity initiative can positively impact up to 15% of overall earnings.

Not to mention, all suppliers should be treated fairly and offered fair compensation that is on time. Add flexible contract options and onboarding processes, and you’re on your way to a much more socially conscious supply chain.

Final thought

By taking the steps listed above, supply chain business leaders can improve their branding, reduce their environmental impact, enhance their social impact, and secure their license to operate in a more socially conscious marketplace. What other ways can you think of that will help build a socially conscious supply chain?

 

Close Menu

Contact Us

Call us at: (317) 682 4940
Email us with comments or questions
x